Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to as many as 60,000 employees across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India. The offer reaches roughly a quarter of the company’s 223,000-strong workforce.
Chief people officer Amy Coleman announced the programme in a message to staff this week. She said it gives employees “the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources.” The company wants to shrink without triggering another formal round of layoffs.
AI Teams Are Included
Sources familiar with the plan told The Verge that staff across most of Microsoft are eligible. That covers AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows and Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources.
Cloud and AI, MicrosoftAI, and corporate, external and legal affairs are only partially taking part. Marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security employees are not included at all.
The timing is pointed. Microsoft has spent years pouring money into Copilot and data centre capacity. Those investments now have to show up somewhere on the balance sheet, and headcount is the easiest line to move.
Four Thousand Jobs Went First
The buyouts arrive months after Microsoft cut 4,800 jobs, mostly in Xbox and commercial sales. Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma is reportedly preparing further reductions of her own.
This is not Microsoft’s first voluntary exit scheme. An earlier programme this year was limited to about 9,000 US employees at specific levels. Eligibility required a worker’s age plus years of service to reach 70 or more. The new offer drops those constraints and widens the pool dramatically.
Coleman admitted the company is in unfamiliar territory. “The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” she wrote. “We’ll learn from it. At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”
The Wider Pattern
Microsoft is not alone in reshaping its workforce around AI. Meta cut thousands of roles this year and pushed others onto AI teams. WPP trimmed 1,000 jobs as automated tools repriced advertising work.
The approach is consistent. Companies are not announcing mass firings. They are offering exits, reassigning staff, and letting attrition carry the rest. That looks gentler on paper and is harder to count in practice.
For Microsoft the arithmetic is simple. Voluntary departures cost less than compulsory ones. They also avoid the public backlash that follows a large layoff announcement.
What the buyout does not answer is where the work goes. If tens of thousands of people leave and Copilot absorbs part of their output, the remaining teams inherit the load. Whether that produces better products remains the open question.
Source: The Verge — Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 employees
The Netherlands, for internationals
One email a week: the week's news for internationals in the Netherlands, new practical guides and what changed in the cities. No spam, unsubscribe any time.
